Threepenny Opera Basics: Synopsis Threepenny Opera: Synopsis The Threepenny Opera proclaims itself "an opera for beggars," and it was in fact an attempt both to satirize traditional opera and operetta and to create a new kind of musical theater based on the theories of two young German artists, composer Kurt Weill and poet-playwright Bert Brecht. The show opens with a mock-Baroque overture, a nod to Threepenny's source, The Beggar's Opera, a brilliantly successful parody of Handel's operas written by John Gay in 1728. In a brief prologue following the overture, a shabby figure comes onstage with a barrel organ and launches into a song chronicling the crimes of the notorious bandit and womanizer Macheath, "Mack the Knife." The setting is a fair in Soho (London), just before Queen Victoria's coronation. Act I Act I begins in the shop of Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, who runs a rather unusual business-he is the boss of London's beggars. He equips and trains them in return for a cut of whatever they can beg.

In the first scene, he enrolls a new beggar with the help of his wife. After finishing with the new man, they notice that their grown daughter Polly did not come home the previous night. The scene shifts to an empty stable where Macheath himself is about to marry Polly, as soon as his gang has stolen and brought all the necessary food and furnishings. No vows are exchanged, but Polly is satisfied, and everyone sits down to a banquet. Since none of the gang members can provide fitting entertainment, Polly gets up and tosses off "Pirate Jenny," showing a surprisingly tough side of herself. The gang gets nervous when Chief of Police Tiger Brown arrives, but it's all part of the act; Brown had served with Mack in England's colonial wars and has prevented Mack from being arrested all these years. The old friends duet in the "Cannon Song" ("Army Song"). In the next scene, Polly returns home and defiantly announces that she has married Mack by singing the "Barbara Song." She stands fast against Mr. and Mrs. Peachum's anger, but she does let slip Brown's connection to Mack, which they will use to their advantage. Act II Polly tells Mack that her father will have him arrested.

He is finally persuaded that Peachum has enough influence to do it and makes arrangements to leave London, explaining his bandit "business" to Polly so she can manage it in his absence. Before he leaves town, he stops at his favorite brothel, where he sees his ex-lover, Jenny. They sing the "Pimp's Ballad" ("Tango Ballad") about their days together, but Mack doesn't know Mrs. Peachum has bribed Jenny to turn him in. Despite Brown's apologies, there's nothing he can do, and off Mack goes to jail. After he sings the "Ballad of the Easy Life," another girlfriend, Lucy (Brown's daughter) and Polly show up at the same time, setting the stage for a nasty argument that builds to the "Jealousy Duet." After Polly leaves, Lucy engineers Mack's escape. When Mr. Peachum finds out, he confronts Brown and informs him that he will unleash all of his beggars during Queen Victoria's coronation parade, ruining the ceremony and costing Brown his job. Act III Jenny comes to the Peachums' shop to demand her bribe money, which Mrs. Peachum refuses to pay.

Jenny reveals that Mack is at Suky Tawdry's house. When Brown arrives, determined to arrest Peachum and the beggars, he is horrified to learn that the beggars are already in position and only Mr. Peachum can stop them. To placate Peachum, Brown's only option is to arrest Mack and have him executed. In the next scene, Mack is back in jail and desperately trying to raise enough of a bribe to get out again, even as the gallows are being assembled. Soon it becomes clear that neither Polly nor the gang members can raise any money, and Mack prepares to die. Then a sudden reversal: A messenger on horseback arrives to announce that Macheath has been pardoned by the Queen and granted a castle and pension. The cast then sings the Finale, which ends with a plea that wrongdoing not be punished too harshly.

Timeless Power of 'The Threepenny Opera' | The Juilliard School Timeless Power of 'The Threepenny Opera' Author December 2009/January 2010 Juilliard’s versatile fourth-year actors will get to show off their musical talents this month in a production of The Threepenny Opera , directed by Sam Gold. The work, by playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), was first performed in its original German as Die Dreigroschenoper at Berlin’s Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on August 31, 1928, with Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya, in the role of Jenny Diver. The show quickly became an international sensation and its opening number, “Mack the Knife,” achieved iconic status as one of the most popular songs of the century. Bertolt Brecht (left) and Kurt Weill, c. 1928, the year their Threepenny Opera was premiered in its original German. The fourth-year actors will perform the work in December.

(Photo by Courtesy of the Kurt Weill Foundation) Lotte Lenya, who played Jenny Diver in the 1928 German premiere of The Threepenny Opera, won a Tony for her performance of the role, in English, in 1956. Above: Lenya performs as Jenny at the Theater de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theater) in Greenwich Village (photo c. 1954). (Photo by S. Neil Fujita) Body The source for the work was John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728), a humorous “ballad opera” with no generic precedent. Gay’s work consisted of dialogue interspersed with 69 songs, mainly popular ballads of the British Isles and France, and well-known opera arias by Handel and Purcell, among others. A satire of both Italian opera conventions and the political corruption of England’s reigning prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, The Beggar’s Opera was tremendously popular with 18th-century theatergoers and had enjoyed a successful London revival in the early 1920s.

In addition to Gay’s text, Brecht also used poems by Rudyard Kipling and Françoise Villon. Translations for all the texts were by made by Brecht’s close collaborator, Elisabeth Hauptmann. Retaining the essential plot and characters of The Beggar’s Opera, The Threepenny Opera updates the setting to Victorian London, where Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, the “boss of London’s beggars,” owns a shop where he outfits and trains beggars in return for a cut of their takings. When Peachum and his wife learn that their daughter, Polly, has married Macheath, a.k.a. the notorious bandit Mack the Knife, they hatch a plan to bring about Mack’s ruin. Other principal characters include “Tiger” Brown, the chief of police and an old friend and ally of Mack; Brown’s daughter, Lucy, to whom Mack is also secretly married; and Jenny, a prostitute with whom Mack has enjoyed a long and seemingly close relationship.

Although Mack is imprisoned twice during the course of the play and is on his way to the gallows at the end of the final act, the king’s mounted messenger saves him at the last minute, providing, in the words of the final chorus, an “alternate conclusion” in which mercy tempers justice—an appropriately ironic ending for the satirical tale. A committed Marxist, Brecht was the most famous practitioner of “ epic theater ,” a genre defined by a non-naturalistic mode of acting, montage-like dramatic construction, and the use of choruses and projections to provide commentary. These techniques are seen throughout The Threepenny Opera, as for example when Jenny steps out of character to deliver the “Pirate Jenny” song—a disruptive moment highlighted in Juilliard’s production by the use of two different actors for the role of Jenny. Brecht utilized such techniques to achieve his goals of breaking down the division between high art and popular culture, and using theater as a platform to advance his political ideals.

Commenting on The Threepenny Opera in the program notes of a 1928 performance, he said that the work confronted “the same sociological situation as The Beggar’s Opera: just like 200 years ago, we have a social order in which virtually all strata of the population, albeit in extremely varied ways, follow moral principles—not, of course, by living within a moral code but off it.” On the other hand, as Weill scholar Stephen Hinton observes in his book Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera, “If the work exerts any socio-polemical impact, which [Ernst] Bloch and [Theodor] Adorno claimed, it is at best indirect.

Unlike in The Beggar’s Opera, the outrage expressed in The Threepenny Opera is general, not particular … Gay’s satire contains scarcely camouflaged barbs against the Walpole administration, whereas Weill and Brecht’s satire lampoons conventional bourgeois morality, both in and out of the theater.” Hinton describes The Threepenny Opera as a bold act of “creative vandalism,” but with the exception of one number, “Peachum’s Morning Hymn,” the music was all newly composed by Weill. By the time Weill met Brecht, he had already distinguished himself as a composer of classical works for the concert hall. While his jazz-influenced score for The Threepenny Opera represented a new direction for his own work and for musical theater in general, Weill saw it as part of the continuing evolution of the classical opera tradition, noting in a 1929 interview with the Austrian newspaper Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung that “this type of music is the most consistent reaction to Wagner.

It signifies the complete destruction of the concept of music drama.” On the other hand, having admired Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale as a type of mixed-genre work that could serve as a new prototype for opera, Weill must have been especially pleased, as he wrote in a letter to his wife in January 1930, that “Stravinsky is really enthusiastic about Dreigroschenoper.” Critics were also quick to recognize the work’s originality. In a 1928 review for the Berlin newspaper Die Zeit, A. Ebbutt wrote that The Threepenny Opera “is not … a morality play, it is not a revue, it is not a conventional burlesque, and it is not The Beggar’s Opera; but it is an interesting combination of them illustrating the progress of a movement towards freeing music, acting, and the cinematograph from the ruts of Italian opera, Wagnerian music-drama, drawing-room comedy, and Hollywood, and creating something new with them.” The work’s energy and freshness have won over audiences ever since.

Because of its unique genre, the show presents a special challenge for actors who, as Weill said, “don’t have to be trained singers but … have to be able to put over a song in the special singing style of Threepenny Opera.” Thanks to the Drama Division’s strong emphasis on vocal training, and as they’ve already proven in their cabaret performances last spring, Juilliard’s Group 39 actors are more than ready for the challenge. The music is also demanding for the instrumentalists, especially in attempts to adhere to the original performance standard in which just seven musicians played a total of 23 instruments. (Juilliard’s production will come pretty close, using an eight-member ensemble comprised of both jazz and classical music students.) This will be the first production of The Threepenny Opera in the history of Juilliard’s Drama Division.

Commenting on the show, James Houghton, the division’s artistic director, remarked that “The Threepenny Opera possesses a vitality and relevance that resonates today—we knew that Group 39 and director Sam Gold would seize this opportunity and make the most of this work.” (Gold, an alumnus of Juilliard’s theater directing program, previously directed Juilliard’s Group 35 actors in a production of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II in 2006.) Houghton also noted that the production “provides a great opportunity for collaboration across many disciplines within Juilliard. This is exactly the kind of project we have been hoping to incorporate in our training and the larger Juilliard community.” More by Lisa B.

Robinson The Threepenny Opera - Modernism Lab Essays The Threepenny Opera by Pericles Lewis In 1928 , the same year in which he proclaimed himself a Marxist, Bertolt Brecht had his first international success with The Threepenny Opera, an adaptation of the eighteenth-century Beggar’s Opera by John Gay, which Brecht wrote in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann, who co-wrote several of his early plays and after the war participated in his theatrical company, the Berliner Ensemble. Brecht set the opera in the criminal underworld of Victorian London; in it, he satirized the respectable bourgeoisie as no better than the gangster Macheath (Mac the Knife). Mac elopes with Polly Peachum, the daughter of the beggar king, who has organized the beggars of London and taught them more effective techniques for begging, in exchange for a cut of their profits. Like the boorish and primitive poet in Brecht's Baal, Mac seduces various women; he is imprisoned twice but eventually reprieved and knighted by the Queen.

One of the central themes of the play is hypocrisy, and Brecht wrote that “just like two hundred years ago we have a social order in which virtually all levels, even if in a wide variety of ways, pay respect to moral principles not by leading a moral life but by living off morality.” [1] The play is a “ballad opera,” making use of popular music, written by Kurt Weill , a pioneer of “new music” who composed simple tunes appropriate for didactic purposes. The song “Mac the Knife” became part of the standard jazz repertory, performed by Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and others. Brecht intended the songs to distance the audience from the action, to “take up a position,” but the music also arguably contributed to the humor and good fun of the play, which is Brecht’s most popular but not his most politically effective. [2] ↑ Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays, ed. Ralph Manheim and John Willett, vol. 2 (New York: Vintage, 1977), p. 322. ↑ Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans.

John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 38. This page has been adapted from Pericles Lewis's Cambridge Introduction to Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2007), p. 190. The Threepenny Opera :: Rodgers & Hammerstein :: Show Details KURT WEILL ON BROADWAY Some of Broadway's best took the stage at New York's Symphony Space on October 7, 2013, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Broadway premiere of One Touch of Venus and the release of the first complete recording of the show (available on JAY Records). Hosted by Ted Chapin, the evening highlighted songs from Venus as well as favorites from other Weill shows, including Street Scene, Lady in the Dark, Love Life, Lost in the Stars, Knickerbocker Holiday, The Threepenny Opera, and Happy End. The starry cast featured Melissa Errico, Brent Barrett, Judy Blazer, and Ron Raines alongside winners of the Lotte Lenya Competition. The evening was music directed by Weill specialist James Holmes and directed by Richard Jay-Alexander.

Below are excerpts from Ted Chapin’s narration, edited to follow the order of the Broadway World video of highlights from the concert. read more In 1928 THE THREEPENNY OPERA had its world premiere in the original German as DIE DREIGROSCHENOPER at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, where it played over 400 performances. The musical play's instant popularity and artistry launched the international careers of playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill. The birthday of Bertolt Brecht, the revolutionary poet and playwright who collaborated with composer Kurt Weill to create their iconic work THE THREEPENNY OPERA. Brecht was born in Germany in 1898. The birthday of Marc Blitzstein, composer and writer who translated Bertolt Brecht's THE THREEPENNY OPERA in an English language version. Blitzstein was born in 1905. Innovative composer Kurt Weill was born this day in 1900, in Dessau, Germany. In Europe, Weill collaborated with playwright Bertolt Brecht on iconic works such as THE THREEPENNY OPERA and THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY.

After emigrating to America in 1935, Weill composed for musicals including KNICKERBOCKER HOLIDAY, LADY IN THE DARK, LOST IN THE STARS, and ONE TOUCH OF VENUS. His life and relationship with singer Lotte Lenya are dramatized by the show LOVEMUSIK. In 1954, THE THREEPENNY OPERA opened on Broadway for its first successful American premiere in a translation by Marc Blitzstein. Composer Kurt Weill's wife Lotte Lenya reprised her iconic role as Jenny, and won a 1955 Tony Award for her portrayal. The show ran for 2,611 performances. In 1961, THE THREEPENNY OPERA closed on Broadway after 2,611 performances. “Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s seminal 1928 critique of capitalism, self-interest and the bourgeoisie suits … the tone of these troubled times … the kind of theater that shakes up an audience.” — Chicago Daily Herald “What a treat! … Some of the wittiest, catchiest, most caustic odes … ever to grace a musical comedy….

There are pop-out lines (for instance, a blatant equation of bankers with criminals) that could have been written yesterday. But the undying contradiction of Threepenny Opera is that it bites the hand of the politically blasé bourgeoise while also tickling it.” — Seattle Times “An absolute triumph….

A completely engaging if not always nice evening of musical theater.” — Broadway World “Smart, sardonic and utterly entertaining.” — Madison Capital Times “The Threepenny Opera is one of those rare examples of the transformation of a great theatrical work from one era into a successful work of a later era.… Brecht’s social and economic preachment remains stingingly relevant to our time.” — Madison Daily Page, “With Brecht’s cuttingly satirical look at the meaning of morality in a society populated by gangsters, beggars, prostitutes and corrupt cops, and Weill’s edgy, opera-meets-cabaret score … this show was all but irresistible.” — Chicago Sun-Times “A distinguished and delightful work of art, striking, sardonic, original, humorous and always interesting.” — New York Post “The Threepenny Opera resists virtue admirably.” — The New York Times “This sordid and beautiful vaudeville of life in a Victorian London slum, set to Kurt Weill’s alternating strident and plaintive music-hall melodies, does not date.” — Cue “A tour de force. Sometimes Weill writes with sangfroid, with the insolence, indifference and tired routine of any jazz hack.

But you are not listening to shop-made jazz. You are listening to a master of his craft, saying in his score all sorts of things … with world weariness, compassion and despair, in a tonal dialect which includes some fetching tunes and some apt dissonance.… This opera, singspiel, what you will … may well last as long as its eighteenth-century predecessors.” — The New York Times Song # The Wild Party Written By: Marc Blitzstein "In January, 1950, I telephoned Kurt Weill at his Rockland County home. 'Call it an exercise, Kurt, or call it an act of love. I don't know which: I've made a translation of the Pirate Jenny song from your Dreigroschenoper. When can I show it to you?' Weill said, 'Right now. Sing it to me.' 'Over the phone?' 'Why not? Wait. I'll put Lenya on the extension.' I started speak-singing the song -- very careful about my words, just indicating the tune and the rhythms. After the first line, Weill at the other end began drumming his fingers to accompany me with the beat. I finished.

He said in the mild quiet tone so characteristic of him, 'I think you've hit it. After all these years! It does work, Lenya?' Lenya said (very excited), 'Yes. Yes. That I can sing. When can I have a copy?' Then Kurt said, 'Marc, do it all, why don't you? The whole opera. I wish you could read the half dozen versions and translations people have sent me: pfui! You do it. You're the one for it.' I was happy at their enthusiasm, but other work called. In April of that year Kurt Weill died. I attended the funeral. Coming home, I found myself haunted by another number from the Dreigroschenoper -- this time the Solomon Song, that wonderful cunning melody that seems to slip out from under the lyric, continuing beyond it. That took me all night. Soon I was translating still other songs and snatches from Bertolt Brecht's original text. The thing was getting under my skin.

By that time I had reached the point of no return and had to do it all." Read More Show Less Written By: Lotte Lenya "At no time in theatre history did a play draw near its opening in such an atmosphere of utter doom. The word around Berlin was that [producer Ernst-Josef] Aufricht, poor benighted amateur, was stuck with the turkey of all time. The disasters multiplied... What was supposed to be the final dress rehearsal, the night before the opening, lasted until five in the morning. Everybody was completely distraught, shouting and swearing --- everybody except Kurt Weill...We heard that Aufricht was asking people out front if they knew where he could find a new play in a hurry. Respected Berlin theatre oracles slipped out to spread the word that Brecht and Weill proposed to insult the public with a ludicrous mishmash of opera, operetta, cabaret, straight theatre, outlandish American jazz, not one thing or the other; why didn't they withdraw the work before the opening? ...There have been many accounts written of that opening night of Dreigroschen; it has so truly entered the realm of the fabulous that I shall be brief.

Up to the stable scene the audience seemed cold and apathetic, as though convinced in advance that it had come to a certain flop. Then after the kanonen [Cannon] song, an unbelievable roar went up, and from that point it was wonderfully, intoxicatingly clear that the public was with us... [By the next day, all of] Berlin was swept by a Dreigroschenoper fever. In the streets no other tunes were whistled. A Dreigroschenoper bar opened, where no other music was played. Immediately the "Brecht style" and the "Weill style" were slavishly imitated by other dramatists and composers... Perhaps the strangest note of all is that people who scornfully had passed up that opening night began to lie about it, and to claim to have been there, primed for a sure-fire sensation! Even now, anybody who passed through the Berlin of that period, and who comes backstage to see me at the Theatre de Lys in New York, twenty-eight years later, feels compelled to cry, "Of course I was there that opening night!"And though I remember that the Schiffbaurdamm had less than eight hundred seats, I nod.

Why not, after all? Sometimes, remembering all that madness...I'm not even sure that I was there myself." Threepenny Opera The Warm-Up Leonard Bernstein The first Festival of the Creative Arts at Brandeis University in June 1952 was Leonard Bernsteinï¿½s brainchild. It featured performances and symposia on classical music (Aaron Copland), jazz (Miles Davis, Max Roach), dance (Merce Cunningham), poetry (William Carlos Williams), and theater. Bernsteinï¿½s close friendship with Marc Blitzstein gave him an obvious incentive to feature a concert performance of Blitzsteinï¿½s new English version of The Threepenny Opera on June 14, 1952. Lotte Lenya (Jenny) and Jo Sullivan (Polly) played the roles they would take when the show opened off-Broadway in 1954, while Bernstein himself conducted. Report on the concert: ï¿½This work has never really been a success when attempts have been made to transplant it to this country. . . . The Blitzstein text is a glorious success, and should win a wide American audence for The Threepenny Opera if anything can. .

. . He has managed to give the plot and characters a spontaneous, vernacular quality . . . The song lyrics border on the miraculous. . . . Those who know the German original better than I do marvelled at the constant felicity of the parallels between it and Blitzsteinï¿½s version.ï¿½ ―Cecil Smith, Musical America, July 1952 On August 18, 1952, Leonard Bernstein wrote to Lenya: ï¿½You thank me! I should be out there spreading roses at your feet for all you did for us at the Brandeis Festival. And it is you who have done the great service to Kurtï¿½s music by being the archangel of a performance that could not have existed but for you. Genug. Youï¿½re a genius.ï¿½ In the Beginning . . . From left: Lenya, Merrill, Sullivan, Rae, Lishner The Threepenny Opera opened at the Theater de Lys on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, March 10, 1954 and played for 96 performances. Another show had already been booked into the theater, forcing the run to end.

The opening night cast included Bea Arthur (Lucy), John Astin (Readymoney Matt), Lotte Lenya (Jenny), Leon Lishner (Mr. Peachum), Scott Merrill (Mack), Gerald Price (Streetsinger), Charlotte Rae (Mrs. Peachum), and Jo Sullivan (Polly). Pretty good for an unheralded show in an unknown theater on a grubby Greenwich Village street. The Artistic Team Wedding scene Lotte Lenya: ï¿½Marc Blitzstein has come closest to capturing the power of Brechtï¿½s book and lyrics. He has kept the slang and the sting. . . . Every time Broadway has approached me about Kurtï¿½s opera, they have wanted to change it. They wanted an all-Negro cast or a different locale, or some other gimmick.

I have always turned them down, and so did Kurt.ï¿½ ―quoted in Emory Lewis, ï¿½Musicals Off Beat,ï¿½ Cue, April 3, 1954 Marc Blitzstein: ï¿½I regard my role as that of a relayer, a middleman; I have simply made negotiable to our American audiences an opera I have adored since my Berlin student days. All translationsï¿½all, I sayï¿½are bound to be failures; one must be content to settle for that which fails least.ï¿½ ―ï¿½Prize Dreigroschen,ï¿½ Saturday Review, October 25, 1958 Carmen Capalbo, director: I guess I'm the only director who ever had to do a singing audition to get a directing job . . . So I went over to the piano, Blitzstein sat down, he turned over the first page . . .

and there is "Mack the Knife." And he said, "Let's see if we can find a key for you." And I just looked quickly over the lyrics, and we found a key, and I sang "Mack the Knife" over his shoulder, cold. And then we did a couple of others, and then I think we did the "Army Song." At the end of that, Lenya said, "Where did you learn to sing like that?" I said, "From you." She said to Marc, "That's the man to do Threepenny Opera." First page of 1954 program Scott Merrill, Macheath, 1954-57: Lenya said, ï¿½Youï¿½re not having fun with the part. Itï¿½s a fun part!ï¿½ When I went back the second time, I created this wonderful sassy walk, and when I first did it it felt right, and I realized I couldnï¿½t have been more wrong about Mack! Heï¿½s a big camp!

Anyhow, I went back and did the show that night, and I think everybody in the cast came to me and said, ï¿½What happened?!ï¿½ Carmen saw me maybe about a week later and said, ï¿½I donï¿½t know who youï¿½ve been talking to buddy, but you sure got it right now!ï¿½ The Critics ï¿½Marc Blitzsteinï¿½s translation of the Brecht text is, to my mind, the finest thing of its kind in existence. He has got the spirit of the play and and rendered it powerfully, colloquially, compactly. And his English versions of the songs are so apt prosodically, fit their music so perfectly, that one can scarcely believe them to be translations at all.ï¿½ ―Virgil Thomson, ï¿½Two Shows,ï¿½ New York Herald Tribune, March 21, 1954 ï¿½The combination of Kurt Weillï¿½s music wedded to Marc Blitzsteinï¿½s unadorned but penetrating translation of Brechtï¿½s original text, makes it an irresistible stage piece. . . .

Lotte Lenyaï¿½s Jenny, the most consistently brilliant portrayal of the evening, makes Threepenny Opera a must for any adventurous theatergoer.ï¿½ ―Harriett Johnson, ï¿½Donï¿½t Miss Threepenny Opera,ï¿½ New York Post, May 17, 1954 ï¿½The Blitzstein adaptation strikes us as being pretentious and forced. Instead of rapier wit, it offers humor with a bludgeon. . . . Blitzstein has left the Weill score intact. It offers tinkly tunes, cleverly orchestrated for an ensemble of eight pieces. In our opinion, Weill was a fine arranger, though often less than original as a composer.ï¿½ ―Robert Coleman, ï¿½Threepenny Opera Falls Flat on Its Face,ï¿½ Daily Mirror, March 21, 1954 ï¿½Everything seems labored and awkward instead of sprightly and bright.

The miracle is that the inherent superiority of the material survives all hazards.ï¿½ ―Harold Clurman, ï¿½Theater,ï¿½ The Nation, March 27, 1954 The Cast Recording Far left: Carmen Capalbo and Stanley Chase, center: Lotte Lenya, Marc Blitzstein, Marga Richter, right: Ed Cole Most of the opening-night cast of Threepenny sang on the recording made by MGM in April 1954, the first ever off-Broadway cast recording. The principal exception was Martin Wolfson instead of Leon Lishner as Mr. Peachum. (Wolfson was already in the cast by the time the recording was made.) The recording was an instant hit and went on to sell well over half a million copies. Itï¿½s still available as a CD reissue from Decca Broadway. Original MGM record jacket Some songs were shortened due to time constraints, and squeamish executives forced Blitzstein to revise lyrics at the recording session, because some songs were deemed too explicit.

Mostly this meant simply changing a word here and there: ï¿½chippyï¿½ became ï¿½cutieï¿½ (ï¿½Solomon Songï¿½) and ï¿½Get off your assï¿½ became ï¿½Get on your feetï¿½ (ï¿½Call from the Graveï¿½). But in a few cases entire stanzas had to be dropped, as in ï¿½Mack the Knife,ï¿½ or rewritten. Here is an example from ï¿½Tango Balladï¿½: original (heard in the theater) A sailor would appear; I got out of bed, Went out and had a beer, he crawled in instead. And when he paid his bill, back in bed Iï¿½d climb, And say: Good-night my friend, thank you, any time. revised (heard on the recording) The milkman rang the bell; I got out of bed, I opened up her purse, gave him what he said. Iï¿½d have a glass of milk, back in bed Iï¿½d climb. You understand she was out working all this time.

The Longest Run A year and four months after Threepenny closed in 1954, pressure from the press and public caused the Theater de Lys (which had since been taken over by Lucille Lortel) to bring back Threepenny, which reopened September 20, 1955, with largely the same cast. The show did not close until December 17, 1961ï¿½at the time a record-setting run for a musical in New York. Over 750,000 spectators saw it, and over 700 actors took part. Among them: Edward Asner, Jerry Orbach, Estelle Parsons, Jerry Stiller, Katherine Sergava. Lenya left the cast for good in the spring of 1956, but that had no effect on the productionï¿½s momentum.

The Artistic Team Scott Merrill (Macheath) and Bea Arthur (Lucy Brown) Bertolt Brecht to Marc Blitzstein (undated letter): ï¿½Ich halte Ihre Bearbeitung der Dreigroschenoper fï¿½r grossartig und schï¿½tze Sie sehr.ï¿½ (I consider your adaptation of Threepenny magnificent and think highly of you.) Stanley Chase, producer: ï¿½Messrs. Capalbo and Chase, at twenty-eight one of the youngest producing teams around, had several offers to bring Threepenny uptown to Broadway, but ï¿½itï¿½s the kind of production that needs a small theater off the beaten track,ï¿½ Mr. Chase said.ï¿½ ―quoted in Judith Crist, ï¿½ï¿½Threepenny Operaï¿½ Reopening Tuesday,ï¿½ New York Herald Tribune, September 18, 1955 Gerald Price, who played Mack several times: ï¿½You see, there are so many mean and vicious lines that in order to get any entertainment value one plays Mack with a certain tongue in cheek air.

When you play it that way the show has lightness. If you bear down on the heavy words and play them for their full meaning then the play becomes ugly.ï¿½ ―quoted in Don Ross, ï¿½An Off-Broadway Record,ï¿½ New York Herald Tribune, July 3, 1960 Scott Merrill as Macheath The critics ï¿½The production is superb. It vividly expresses the casual, squalid hugger-mugger of the fable.ï¿½ ―Brooks Atkinson, ï¿½Songs and Cynicism,ï¿½ New York Times, March 11, 1956 ï¿½There are two shows, really, at the Theater de Lys. One has a cast of twenty ebullient and engaging actors and actresses, at least two of whom (Jane Connell, Tige Andrews) operate on a higher, considerably sharper level than the norm.

The other show has a cast of one, and her name is Lotte Lenya.ï¿½ ―Jerry Tallmer, ï¿½Catching up with the Season,ï¿½ Village Voice, October 26, 1955 ï¿½The various Pollys have used up 14 dressing gowns and 28 pairs of shoes. Jenny has gone through 20 costumes and Mack the Knife has worn out 20 canes, 35 derbies and 22 pairs of shoes. . . . Producer Capalbo said he dreaded to see an uptown producer turn up at the de Lys because such a visit invariably meant another raid on his cast.ï¿½ ―Charles McHarry, ï¿½The Threepenny Opera that Made $2.5 Million,ï¿½ Sunday News, July 31, 1960 Trivia Jo Sullivan as Polly Rehearsals for Threepenny began February 8, 1954, and never really ended because of constant cast changes.

As a Variety headline put it, ï¿½Threepenny Proves Neat Showcase, but Never Gets out of Rehearsalï¿½ (September 19, 1956). Blitzstein considered the title ï¿½Shoestring Operaï¿½ for Threepenny, while director Carmen Capalbo thought it should have been called ï¿½The Two-Bit Opera.ï¿½ Although ï¿½Pirate Jennyï¿½ was originally written for Polly in the wedding scene, in this production it was moved to act 2 and given to Jenny (played by Lenya). Blitzstein created new lyrics for the ï¿½Bilbao Songï¿½ from the Weill/Brecht/Hauptmann show Happy End, and that became Pollyï¿½s wedding number: ï¿½The Bide-a-Wee in Soho.ï¿½ In 1955, the producers of the 1933 Broadway staging threatened to file suit to stop the off-Broadway production, claiming that they owned the U.S. rights. Lenya and Blitzstein settled, and the suit never went forward.

Despite playing off-Broadway, Threepenny took two Tony Awards in 1956: one for Lotte Lenya as Featured Actress and a special award for the show as a whole. Scott Merrill was nominated for Supporting Actor in a Musical, but lost out to Russ Brown of Damn Yankees. Two actors, William Duell and Marion Selee, were in the cast for nearly the entire run, but both departed during the summer of 1961, a few months before the show closed. Duell played Filch and the Mounted Messenger. Selee played Molly, one of the whores, and frequently covered the role of Mrs. Peachum. She was forced out of the cast by illness and died in September. Duell went on to appear in several productions of Threepenny, the last in June 2003 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Lenyaï¿½s Tony Award medal

Question: Who composed the "Threepenny Opera"?
Answer: KURT WEILL